The ICOW Maritime Claims Data Set

The maritime claims data set follows the general guidelines on the ICOW home page.

A maritime claim is defined as explicit contention between two or more nation-states over the use of a specific maritime zone. Official government representatives (i.e., individuals who are authorized to make or state foreign policy positions for their governments) must make explicit statements contesting the usage of that maritime zone, typically for matters like fishing or navigation.

Please note that the ICOW Project and its directors do not take or endorse official positions on any maritime claims. Our goal is to identify cases where nation-states have disagreed over specific issues in the modern era, as well as measuring what made those issues valuable to them and studying how they chose to manage or settle those issues. Inclusion/exclusion of specific cases, and coding of details related to those cases, follows strict guidelines presented in the project's codebooks (which are available below).

Measuring Claim Salience

The salience of maritime claims is measured by a 0-12 index, which includes up to six points each for the claim's challenger and target states (one point each for six indicators of salience). For more details see the Hensel, Mitchell, Sowers, and Thyne JCR article listed below in the data set references section of this page.

Homeland/Dependent Territory: do the maritime borders extend from homeland territory, rather than from a colonial or dependent possession? (listed separately for each claimant)

Strategic Location: is the maritime zone considered to be a militarily or economically strategic location?

Fishing: is the maritime zone used for fishing?

Migratory Fish Stocks: does the claim address migratory fish stocks that travel through the maritime zone?

Oil: are oil resources known or suspected to exist within the maritime zone?

Territorial Claim: is the claim related to an ongoing territorial claim (i.e., does it involve maritime areas extending beyond either coastal territory or an island that is part of a current territorial claim)?

Current Status

We have finished data collection for the Western Hemisphere and Europe for the years 1900-2001. Work is underway for the rest of the world, with the Middle East nearly complete and will be released with version 1.2 of the ICOW data by the end of spring 2014. Work on both Asia/Oceania and Africa is also making progress, and one or both regions should be released by the end of 2014.

Region

Status

Number of Claims(and Dyadic Claims)

Western Hemisphere

Data collection completed (1900-2001)

45 distinct maritime zones(68 dyadic claims/2374 dyad-years)

Europe

Data collection completed (1900-2001)

42 distinct maritime zones(75 dyadic claims/854 dyad-years)

Africa

Research currently underway

Middle East

Research currently underway

Asia and Oceania

Research currently underway

Descriptive Details

Version 1.1 of the ICOW Maritime Claims data set includes claims over a total of 87 distinct maritime zones. Some of these areas are claimed by multiple claimants at various points in time or are settled temporarily only to see renewed claims later (perhaps related to expanded claims to offshore maritime zones), so these claims include 143 dyadic claims that together cover 3228 dyad-years. These claims have been managed through 95 militarized interstate disputes and 496 peaceful settlement attempts (including bilateral negotiations, non-binding third party activities like mediation or good offices, and binding third party activities like arbitration and adjudication).

Data Set References

The first published article to use the ICOW Maritime Claims data set was Hensel, Mitchell, Sowers, and Thyne's 2008 JCR article:

Download the Codebooks and Data

All ICOW data sets may be downloaded freely, but we request several professional courtesies from users:

(1) Please do not redistribute ICOW data to other scholars. Instead, every user should be directed to this web site to download the latest officially released version of the data, which may be more up-to-date. (It would also be desirable for current users of ICOW data to check this web site occasionally to see if newer versions of the data have been released.)

(2) As you are using the data, if you notice any potential errors or missing cases, please report them to the ICOW project, so that we can investigate and correct the error if appropriate.

(3) Please email us a copy of any of your research. We are always interested in seeing what other scholars are doing with the data.

Coding Manuals

The following links provide access to the coding manuals and other useful information:

ICOW Data user's manual(in PDF format; a description and variable list for the full ICOW data on territorial, river, and maritime claims, including peaceful settlement attempts; this file is also included in the data download, below)

Maritime claims coding manual(in PDF format; the coding rules and instructions that were used by ICOW researchers as they collected and coded the maritime claims data)

General ICOW coding manual(in PDF format; general coding rules and instructions for ICOW researchers working on the territorial, river, or maritime claims data sets)

ICOW non-state actor list(in PDF format; a list of actor codes for non-state actors that were involved in ICOW claims, usually as third parties trying to help manage or settle the claims)

Data

The maritime claims data set is included in the main ICOW data download, along with the territorial claims and maritime claims data sets:

ICOW Data version 1.1(a .zip archive containing the data in STATA and .CSV format as well as a user's manual in PDF format):

The latest release version of the ICOW territorial claims, river claims, and maritime claims data sets, including claim dates, participants, salience, militarization, and peaceful settlement attempts (bilateral or third party) for all claims. This release covers territorial claims in the Western Hemisphere and Western Europe (1816-2001); river claims in Western Hemisphere, Western Europe, and the Middle East (1900-2001); and maritime claims in the Western Hemisphere and Europe (1900-2001). Additional research is currently underway to extend the coverage of each of these three issue types to the remaining regions of the world.

Please note that this, like all ICOW data sets, uses the list of country codes in the COW interstate system. Please see that list for help in identifying which countries were involved in the events included in this data set, or for any questions about when each country was considered a sovereign, recognized state.

Contact Information

The ICOW Maritime Claims data set is collected and maintained by Sara McLaughlin Mitchell at the University of North Texas. Please contact her with any questions about the data set: